Banū ʿAbd al-Dār

Overview

Banū ʿAbd al-Dār is a house of Quraysh at Mecca, reckoned to ʿAbd al-Dār ibn Quṣayy, whom the sources name as Quṣayy's eldest son and the one to whom he assigned his offices. In their reckoning it stands alongside ʿAbd Manāf's line rather than within it, since ʿAbd al-Dār and ʿAbd Manāf are recorded as brothers. This page describes a historical house and makes no statement about any modern family, surname, or the holder of any office today.

The name

ʿAbd al-Dār means the servant of the House, al-Dār being understood in the accounts of the name as the sanctuary at Mecca. It belongs to a pattern worth noticing: Quṣayy's sons are named ʿAbd Manāf, ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā, ʿAbd al-Dār and ʿAbd Quṣayy, so the ʿabd compound in this period attaches to a deity, a place or a man, and not yet to a name of God. A reader who reads such a name as though it were formed on the later pattern will misread it.

The offices and the division of Quraysh

The accounts report that Quṣayy gathered the offices of Mecca and assigned them to ʿAbd al-Dār, and that the sons of ʿAbd Manāf later disputed the arrangement. Quraysh split into two blocs over it — the Muṭayyabūn, the perfumed, around ʿAbd Manāf's sons, and the Aḥlāf, the confederates, around ʿAbd al-Dār — and the sources say the matter was settled without fighting: the siqāya and the rifāda went to the sons of ʿAbd Manāf, while the ḥijāba, that is the keeping of the key of the Kaʿba, together with the liwāʾ, the standard of war, and the dār al-nadwa, the assembly house, stayed with Banū ʿAbd al-Dār. Compilers differ over which offices fell where, and the whole of it is recorded here as the arrangement of a pre-Islamic tribe.

The ḥijāba after the conquest

The histories record that at the conquest of Mecca the ḥijāba was confirmed in the same house, in the hands of ʿUthmān ibn Ṭalḥa. That is a report about a historical office and the men the historians name in it. Nothing here is a statement about who holds any office at present, and no living family is attributed to this house.

On lineage

Branch lists and affiliations here are given as reported by the classical genealogists, who themselves disagree. Nothing on this page establishes any living family's descent: a shared name may reflect descent, alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and the sources usually say which only when they know.